Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Tuesday, July 7, 2009

The U.S.; a republic or a corporatocracy?

by Jay McDonough

"Corporatocracy" is the term Allison Kilkenny used in an essay today to describe our current state of federal governing.  Dovetailing nicely with yesterday's post
on health care lobbyists, Ms. Kilkenny notes that something on the
order of $1.4M a day (yes, you read that correctly - that's 1.4 MILLION
dollars PER DAY) is being spent by large health care companies to lobby
Congress during these health care reform debates.

So, while poll after poll presents overwhelming evidence
that Americans want a public option included in the reform, its
reasonably safe to assume that the companies pouring all that money
into Congress will get the health care reform that they prefer instead. 

In
her article, Ms. Kilkenny recalls that Canada took steps to curb
lobbyists influence with their 2008 Federal Accountability Act.  The
act includes provisions for documenting arranged meetings between
lobbyists and government officials, and imposes stiff monetary
penalties for violations of the Act.

No such law exists here.  As the chart
yesterday indicated, health care companies know this is crunch time and
are pulling out all the stops to guarantee an outcome that's favorable
to them and their stockholders.  And as the chart also made clear, this
isn't a Republican issue or a Democratic issue.  It's a Congressional
issue.  It needs to be fixed.

Maybe there's something to be
gained here by recalling the definition of republic:  : a government in
which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and
is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law.  (My emphasis and italics)




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1 comment:

  1. CurmudgeonJuly 7, 2009 at 1:29 PM

    America is a republic. It's just that the body of citizens entitled to a vote is restricted to billionaires and corporate persons only.
    This is an entirely expected evolution from much what the founding fathers created when they crafted a constitution that protected the rights and privileges of landowners first and foremost.

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